Belief - God, astrology

It is fine to believe in God because by design it is an unverifiable hypothesis. Science has given us an account of cosmology (that does not depend on a divine creator). Anthropology has given us a credible account of the birth and value of organised religion. Modern neuroscience has illuminated us on scientific basis for the origin of faith. But they don't offer proof that God doesn't exist (or for that matter that he does). One could always say that it is what I believe in and that is that. 

All science can offer is an understanding of where we are and how we got to be. And in our understanding, which by no measure is complete, it is not certain that a God has to exist to create the Big Bang, to create life on earth or to create intelligence.  A universe created without a God would be indistinguishable with a universe with one. No self respecting scientist says that we know everything about everything. But to say that we don't know 'x', therefore God must exist is not a sound argument. It is exactly the same thing as saying we don't know what causes epilepsy, therefore the devil is causing it. (Now, I assume you don't believe that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession... but who knows you might have a theory that epilepsy may be caused by a brain anomaly but what caused the brain anomaly - demon)

Be that as it may, you are free to believe in a celestial teapot. I am not going to convert you, no matter how cogent my arguments. Faith by definition is the belief in something beyond reason. If there was irrefutable proof for the existence of something, then one wouldn't be asked to "believe" in it. Nobody says do you believe in gravity.

But astrology is a whole other thing. It is not based on faith. In theory, it should be verifiable. And I don't mean conduct a double-blind study and give astrologers horoscope charts and personality test results and ask them to pick which chart belongs to which person. Oh no! they did that and published it in Nature too. (It didn't show that astrologers had better than random chance). And it can also be shown that people "want to believe" especially when it comes to personality profiles based on astrology or daily predictions (Forer effect).

I don't mean that kind of science, valuable as it may be. I mean the basis of astrology. Astrology is built on the notion that the movement of celestial bodies affect the course of human events. That the gravitational pull of the planets has a significant effect on human destiny is scientific nonsense. Why? Because Physics. A nurse standing 1 m from the mother during delivery exerts more gravitational pull than Mars or Saturn. 

Our ancestors believed that stars caused events and it is in no way intriguing that they did so. It is a simple fallacy - Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The star moved and the king died. Therefore the star moving to this "constellation" caused adverse conditions for the king. 

It is intriguing that there is some correlation between predictions and reality. Some of it could be attributed to coincidence but not all. Some of it to confirmation bias but not all. But there isn't anything that I have read or come across that provides convincing proof or even convincing plausibility that astrology is built on anything more than discredited pseudo-scientific concepts, like the moon pulling on brain like on tides.

Now, I'd think the scientific approach would be to say "My null hypothesis is astrology is not true". (as mentioned above for 2 reasons - 1. our ancestors relied on astral movements to "make sense" of the world and 2. the assumption of planets exerting gravitational pull on events has no scientific standing). Now, if CERN released results from supercollider tomorrow that showed that Jupiter is benevolent and moon in  the third house means you will be good with words, the null hypothesis is falsified. I will stand in line with you to get daily horoscope predictions. But until something like that happens, my null hypothesis, as a scientist, is that astrology is hokum and i will not base any of my life decisions on it (entirely or partially or even a teeny tiny little bit).

Btw, I have been told by some to have an open mind. I don't know how to tell them politely that someone believing in something that has been the popular belief for 2000 years does not have a more "open mind" than someone who stops to wonder, "wait a minute, why do we believe this". My point being that one does not need an open mind to follow what has been conventional wisdom; it takes one to question the assumptions and conclusions.